On tap at In De Wildeman Amsterdam. Unclear pale yellow coloured, small airy white head, light citrus and white grapes in the nose. Quite sour and fruity with notes of white grapes and citrus. Light bitter and sour finish. Nice one.

Bottle at home house.. Thanks joe... Deep amber.. Thin white lacing.. Soft sweet honey oily fruit nose.. Light tart earthy funk... Sweet honey fruits.. Light dry fruits

Bottle at home thanks Joe.. Hazy amber.. Thin white lacing.. Earthy funk.. Light dry barnyard nose... Light dry fruits... Dry earthy funk... Soft barnyard

Short-lived pinkish white head over pink to terracotta beer, slightly hazy, well-carbonated. Fresh fruity nose - maybe more raspberry than plum to my nose, lactic acid, lemony. Bit of barnyard odours. Quite sour, lactic acid, strange fruity flavour but also ink, wry-ish. All fruitsugars consumed. Acidthinning, fruitslick, light. Carbonation doesn't last. Nice!

Spelt beer by this new and non-traditionally German microbrewery in Nordrhein-Westfalen. Gusher, but with enough care and patience, I managed to reduce the loss to a bare minimum. Egg-white, thickly mousy, regular, extremely stable head (still standing after an hour) over a misty, warm ochre-tinged ‘old gold’ coloured beer with fierce yet refined sparkling. Decidedly non-German aroma – I was expecting a traditional, Weissbier-like and fully German style Dinkelbier – of strong old apple, overripe pear and fermenting apple peel, spice bread dough, cider, dried citrus fruit flesh, baked banana, bread crust, cloves, white grapes, spicy phenols (even mint-like!), yoghurt. Mild banana, strong apple and medium pear sweetishness in the onset, but surrounded by yoghurt-like lactic tartness, probably the result of a Lactobacillus metabolism, which in this case – J. Kemker profiles itself as a “farmhouse brewery” – is apparently intentional; lively carbonation, ‘fluffy’ bready middle with indeed a clear and very pronounced spelt graininess and spiciness, while this yoghurty sourness and strong apple ester continue into a bready finish with a weird metallic tone and a floral, hayish hoppiness providing mild but welcoming bitterness. Assuming the lactic acid infection is indeed intentional, this still needs finetuning, clearly, as it comes off a bit odd and ‘dirty’, with a strange metallic effect to it that clashes with anything truly ‘farmhouse’. Still, after the beer settles a bit and the yeast adds its bread crumb-like effect in the end, it becomes highly drinkable and sessionable, with a good balance between sweet, sour and bitter. Conceptually, it is highly interesting to see – still relatively shyly in comparison with e.g. the United Kingdom or the Low Countries – modern, U.S.-inspired microbreweries pop up in a self-protective, utterly traditional beer country like Germany; farmhouse ales of mixed fermentation like this one, and apparently a string of others by the same brewery, clearly aren’t Germany’s forte yet, but beer traditions are mixed and hybridized or torn apart everywhere these days so who knows what may come out of this kind of experiments in the long run. In certain ways, and I may become a bit too lyrical here, these J. Kemker ‘saisons’ could announce a return to German beer from before the Lager revolution, who knows… Not the best modern ‘mixed fermentation ale’ I had – see e.g. Belgian Alvinne for that – but a very interesting case without a doubt, sparking my interest to find out more about this brewery.